Assisting Driver Simulation: How LED Walls are Shaping Future Walls.

Many companies have adopted driver-in-the-loop (DiL) simulators to help develop new vehicles, technology, and autonomous driving. DiL simulations provide engineers with reliable input from expert test drivers early in the vehicle development process, before physical prototypes are available. This technology allows for the comprehensive testing of advanced driver assistance (ADAS) features, such as lane changing technology, parking assist, emergency braking, and evasive steering. Recently, DiL manufacturer Cruden installed a new DiL at BMW Group’s FIZ Driving Simulator Centre in Munich. The new simulators feature LED wall solutions from LED specialist ICT, offering many benefits over other solutions on the automotive market. In an interview with Just Auto, Cruden’s product manager Bastiaan Graafland and commercial manager Dennis Marcus describe the project and technology’s benefits. They explain that BMW chose LED screens for their quality and visual performance. LED walls can provide high contrast and brightness, which is not possible with projectors. Furthermore, projection systems require multiple projectors and blending images which can cause blending issues. With LED walls, each pixel is separately rendered on multiple computers, resulting in a consistent image. LED walls also provide more flexibility in choosing the shape and size of the visual wall. However, installing an LED wall requires careful alignment to ensure all the pixels in all the panels are properly aligned. The gate was another challenge to overcome since the outer pixels of the gate should also have a distance of 1.9 millimetres. Overall, the new DiL simulators provide BMW with the perfect solution to realise its larger driving simulator system project.